Brief snippet from KPFK local station board meeting of June 19th.
Brief snippet from KPFK local station board meeting of June 19th.
The election committee meeting of April 18 ended strangely with WPFW local board member Eric Ramey saying a lawsuit had been filed, weeks ago, against WPFW and presumably the Pacifica Foundation. At least 4 national board members on the call indicated they knew nothing about the matter.
Update: WPFW local station board member Eric Ramey provided this as a follow-up statement in response to requests for documentation.
“I was informed earlier the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is investigating. In addition the justice department will investigate to determine if any FCC violations have occurred. Accordingly I will invoke the 5th and remain silent”.
Update: David Levine, WPFW’s 2015 local election supervisor until the PNB cancelled the DC election, was contacted by telephone and stated he did not sue WPFW, threaten to sue WPFW, cause papers to be served on WPFW’s general manager or trigger any investigation by CPB, FCC or DOJ.
Local station board member Eric Ramey has indicated he is unwilling to speak further on the matter and was chastised by PNB member Nancy Sorden who asked him to consult with her prior to speaking freely in Pacifica’s streamed meetings saying “we’re all on email at the same time we are on the phone”.
She added “Could you agree to staying open to hearing those reminders and cautions and if you are not sure email ahead of time
or during the meeting?”
By John Ervin
Civil Liberty Alert: Listener-Funded Pacifica Radio Under Siege In N.Y. And D.C.
When it comes to dissidence and democracy, nobody does it better than KPFK, KPFA, WBAI and their sister stations in DC and Houston, and more than a hundred eighty affiliates. Continue reading Civil Liberty Alert: Listener-Funded Pacifica Radio Under Siege In N.Y. And D.C.
For the second time in a week, the Pacifica National Board’s attempt to have a meeting after disenfranchising WBAI’s elected majority and seating two bogus affiliate directors, resulted in meeting interruptus.
This time, no sweet sounds of Mozart but a great beepfest. Continue reading Dialing To Resist By
Berkeley–Thursday’s Pacifica National Board meeting turned into a Mozart sonata after the Siegel/Brazon faction insisted on preventing both the 2016 and 2015 directors from WBAI-FM from voting in the meeting. The music, which played for more than 40 minutes on the conference call line, was preceded by numerous objections to the board majority’s actions, which included trying to seat two affiliate directors self-nominated by stations without affiliate agreements to represent the 200 affiliated stations, refusing the seat four directors elected by NY’s delegate assembly on January 26th: staffer Shawn Rhodes and listener reps Bob Young, Alex Steinberg and Frank LeFever and refusing to allow the 2015 directors from WBAI to vote in their stead, leaving the NY station completely disenfranchised. A clip of some of the meeting can be heard here.
Continue reading Mozart Meeting: Civil Disbedience
Berkeley-Pacifica’s 2015 board elections ended with a bang when the KPFK election delivered a huge supermajority (17 out of 24 seats) for the Committee to Strengthen KPFK/Candidate Slate group in a stinging rebuke for the majority Siegel/Brazon faction. The last time any Pacifica local board had a supermajority was more than five years ago. Continue reading Landslide in Los Angeles
Berkeley– Two national board directors nominated from Pacifica’s 200 programming affiliate stations have become the latest victims in the Siegel/Brazon faction’s machinations to keep a majority on the board in 2016 at all costs. Last week saw the nomination and appointment of a representative from Uhuru Radio, an Internet-only station operated under a Florida for-profit limited liability company called Burning Spear Productions. Uhuru Radio neither broadcasts nor distributes any Pacifica produced programming on their daily schedule. Last night, the board majority, over strenuous objections, appointed another uncontested nominee, this one from a station without any affiliate written agreement in place. In other words, nominated by a station that isn’t an affiliate at all. Continue reading Rules Are For Suckers
Below is a response by former PNB Director Kim Kaufman to GCRC (LA wing of Siegel/Brazon faction) claims about the state of KPFK in Los Angeles, the biggest fundraiser in the 5-station Pacifica Radio network only two years ago. Continue reading Truth Or Dare at KPFK: A Response to GCRC
Berkeley-The “60 pages you can’t see” of documentation regarding the bequest directed to Pacifica Foundation Radio that was incorrectly reported as a restricted donation for the exclusive use of KPFA-Radio, has finally been made available. The national board of directors voted the bequest had been made to the Pacifica Foundation and then to distribute the document package to the network’s five local station boards. Continue reading Partial Document Dump Re: Bequest
Wednesday night, at the stroke of midnight, LA station KPFK’s website disappeared from the Internet for about three hours, putting a sad cap on a month-long fund drive that ended on Friday 11/6 at $608,000 or $142,000 short of the goal.
Why did the website completely go down? KPFK didn’t pay the bill. Continue reading KPFK Website Gone For Hours